Electioneering : Voter Confidence

How important is voter confidence? Well, it would seem that it’s pretty important. So important, in fact, that it is often the defense taken by digital voting machine manufacturers when inquiries are made about possible errors according to Rachel Gillet in the article, “Pay No Attention to that Man behind the Voting Booth.” It states, “Criticism of a company’s wares is spun as an attempt to “undermine voter confidence,” so it takes a court order to uncover the truth.” I can see how public perception can be a delicate balance; the country does not want to hear about another miscount or mistake. However, I don’t believe that a private company should be able to keep public records from review.  This should somehow be amended to voting law.  In my opinion, it is the secrecy behind the methods that should undermine voter confidence to a far greater extent than asking for a recount.

Also mentioned in this article is a website called VerifiedVoting.org. According to their website, “VerifiedVoting.org champions reliable and publicly verifiable elections in the United States.” I agree with their belief that election results should be able to be substantiated with more than a possibly corrupt form of digital memory. Until the day arises that the digital method can be trusted with a similar margin of error to mechanical voting booths they should remain a joint process with a paper to back up the digital.  This brings up the point that some states have laws against paper records that can be traced to specific individuals.  In that case, it might just be that the states should remain mechanical or change law to accommodate the new technology and its need for backup.

TITLE: Pay No Attention to that Man behind the Voting Booth Curtain
SOURCE: Humanist 64 no5 S/O 2004 WN: 0425202929015